Once you have become
the companion of the road, it calls you and calls you again…the road lies
outside the door of your house full of charm and mystery. You want to know
where the roads lead to, and what may be on them, beyond the faint horizon’s
line.

The Golden Road to Samarkand, the Royal Road from Noble Bukhara, the
Silk Roads through Transoxiana from the Ferghana Valley across the Kyzyl Kum
desert to Khiva and the Khorezm oasis. Their call embraces over two millennia
of travels of conquest, commerce and plain curiosity.

From the West came
Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan erupted from the East, while Tamerlane made
his home the heartland of Central Asia, the remarkable historical and
architectural legacy inherited by modern-day Uzbekistan. Bound by sand and
snow, fed by melt water from the Roof of the World, these fertile oases still
attracts the travellers along the fragile threads of the Silk Road.

Uzbekistan
has an enormous tourist potential. The country is considered one of the centres of tourism not only in Central Asia but all
over the world. There are a lot of landmarks of different historical epochs in
such cities as Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva, Shakhrisabz, Kokand and Termez which
were the essential part of the Great Silk Road.

There
are also other attractions for foreign visitors in Uzbekistan. They are:
deserts and reserves rich in various kinds of plants and animals, mountains and
rivers, mineral springs that often has no analogues in the world, the tradition
of applied arts and unique culture.

Wherever one treads in Uzbekistan, one follows
the footprints of some of the greatest travellers in history – from Chinese pioneers
seeking blood-sweating horses or enlightenment from India, to Arab scholars
like ibn-Battuta, the Marco Polo of the Muslim World. To Tamerlane’s court in
1404 journeyed the Spanish ambassador Clavijo; the English merchant Jenkinson
also survived the trials of Transoxiana in the 16th century.

The rich architectural inheritance of
Uzbekistan is endowed with some of the most audacious buildings in the Islamic
world. They are the legacy of a series of Central Asian rulers from the Turkic
hordes to Tamerlane to the Khivan khans, who created breathtaking monuments to
their own immortality in an attempt to leave an enduring mark on restless
nomadic lands. The heavy swell of a melon dome, the graceful arch of a
madrassah portal and the bold silhouette of a towering minaret from some of the
most evocative images a traveller will carry away with him and sound the
clearest echoes of past splendour.

Today the blues of
Samarkand, the khakis of Bukhara and the greens of Khiva reflect Central Asia’s
staggered architectural evolution. Samarkand offers the most spectacular,
Bukhara the widest variety, Khiva the most homogeneous.